should i get a upconvert dvd player?

[atomisk04]

hello. i got a little problem. my plextor is slowly dieing and barely can read cds and dvds. oddly enough it can still burn alright. anyways. i was thinking of getting a dvd player that can upconvert so i can watch movies. but my monitor which is a gateway hd2200, has a faroudja chip inside already. will a new upconvert dvd player look any better?

 

[Captante]

I wouldn't bother ... just snag a new DVD burner for roughly $35.

 

[atomisk04]

yea thats what i thought. thanks. another quick question. as you can tell im kinda a newbie. but is the gpu+codec scaling better than hardware scaling of say an oppo 980h?

 

[Operandi]

By its very nature a PC is an up converting DVD player.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: atomisk04
yea thats what i thought. thanks. another quick question. as you can tell im kinda a newbie. but is the gpu+codec scaling better than hardware scaling of say an oppo 980h?

Considering your moniter has a built in Faroudja video processer which will handle upconverting of all video displayed on it you will most likely get the best results out-putting DVD video at its native 480i which will allow the moniter to handle all the de-interlacing/upconverting onboard & because of this I doubt you would be able to tell much difference between the Oppo & your PC.

If you were out-putting video to a TV with a lesser quality video processer then the Faroudja then the Oppo would very likely produce better results, but for you I don't think its worth it unless you plan on buying a new HDTV in the near future.

 

[Rio Rebel]

Why would you care about upconverting on a 22" screen? Am I missing something?

It's one thing to go from SD to HD, but upconverting isn't even "real" resolution, and it's arguable whether it gives any significant improvement even on larger screens. I can't see you wasting effort or money on this one, if it's to display on your monitor.

Going to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray would be a difference, but upconversion, not so much

 

[themisfit610]

Let's remember one thing. No matter what you connect, it's being upconverted. Even if you connect a first generation DVD player with composite to your HDTV, the TV _will_ upconvert the signal to whatever the TV's native resolution is. The question is exactly how that upconversion is performed.

Chances are the chip in your Gateway screen can do a pretty good job. It might or might not be better than software based upconversion, but that can only be told by testing. Chances are, you won't notice much of a difference. 480p from a good anamorphic 16x9 DVD can be surprisingly good if processed well. Old 16x9 or (gasp) 2.35:1 letterboxed to 4x3 movies (which have less than 300 lines of real resolution in some cases) won't look good no matter what you use to process them.

Some high end DVD players or dedicated scalers / processors can do some real nifty magic to upconvert content to a higher resolution, but the fact remains that you can't magically re-create details. It's pretty impressive what can be done with a basic setup on your PC using ffdshow + avisynth in real time to lanczos or spline resize to your screen resolution, and add some noise. Yes, I said add noise. It tricks your eyes into seeing more details!! It does _not_ compare by any means (to good eyes anyway) to HD-DVD or BluRay of course, but that's not the point.

Spending money on an upconverting DVD player (that's not absurdly high end) and connecting it to your monitor seems like a waste of money to me, unless you really really like the look of one's processor. Just buy a new DVD burner, and watch your movies on your PC, and let software scaling or your monitor's hardware scaler do the job for you, whatever you prefer

~MiSfit